


this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

by decadent_mousse



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Heartbeats, M/M, Picnics, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, i cannot stress enough how happy this fic is, the happiest, weren't expecting that one were you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 04:37:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14205225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: Hermann and Newt get a second chance.  They plan on making the most of it.





	this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

**Author's Note:**

> I got stricken with a mighty need to write some fluff in between working on angsty stuff and this is what came out. Takes place about ten months after Uprising.

Hermann woke with a start, from a nightmare he couldn’t remember enough of to be especially bothered by.  Some nights were worse than others and he was relieved this had proven to be one of the better ones. Both for his own sake, as well as Newt’s, who was lying close beside him in his --  _ their _ \-- bed.  Sometime in the night, Hermann must have rolled over in his sleep, head on Newt’s chest instead of his pillow.

They’d laid together like this often, years ago.  After their drift, after the Breach had been closed.  Not for long, in retrospect, before everything had fallen apart, but it was something Hermann had always treasured and something he’d missed long afterward.  After enough years had passed, it wasn’t something he’d ever expected to get back. The two of them had never been strangers to long-distance relationships, but this time, it had been different.  Newt occasionally sent him emails: vague, shallow things unlike their past correspondence, and even less frequently called him. Their exchanges were always odd, stilted, brief.

It seemed so obvious in hindsight that something had been wrong, but with no small amount of guilt, Hermann realized he’d been far too distracted by his own pain to notice the signs.  He’d been so hurt by Newton -- his departure, the  _ manner _ of the whole thing -- that part of him, in a way, had been glad when they lost touch even as he desperately missed him.  It had been easier than trying to hold onto him.

True, Newt hadn’t reached out to him for help, either, but it was questionable how  _ able _ to he had been, whereas Hermann’s only excuse was willful ignorance.  He knew he shouldn’t blame himself -- he knew Newt certainly didn’t -- but he couldn’t help the way he felt.  He could have realized something was going on. He could have fought harder to keep him, instead of letting him slip away.

He hadn’t.

But he couldn’t change the past, no matter how badly he might want to.  He couldn’t undo any of the things that had been done and there was no point in obsessing about the things he could have done differently.  Freeing Newt from the hivemind had been a step in the right direction, at least, touch-and-go as the whole experience may have been. It was something.

Newt was here: alive, as well as could be expected, and relatively whole.  He was still asleep. 

It was morning, Hermann thought, though he couldn’t be sure and he didn’t dare roll over to look at the time.  Newton slept a lot more soundly while medicated than he did when not, but he still didn’t want to risk waking him with the movement.  It was early enough that light hadn’t quite begun to filter into the room, which meant he had more than enough time before he had to get to work.

He laid there quietly with his head on Newt’s chest, listening to the steady, gentle beating of his heart.  After a decade of separation and the events that had followed, he honestly hadn’t expected to ever hear it again.  

It was a comforting sound.  Years ago, whenever work would require them to separate for longer than either of cared for, they’d sometimes send each other recordings.  Hermann had started the tradition mainly for Newt’s benefit, but over time he’d come to appreciate the ones he’d been sent in return. When Newt had left, Hermann would listen to the old recordings from time to time.  Sometimes it was to help him sleep, others it was simply just to… remember. Eventually, he’d stopped because the more time went on, the more painful it was to think about: Newt was gone. He wasn’t coming back. The recordings were just that -- a fragment of the past.  A pale imitation of the genuine article.

It had taken him a long time to get used to its absence and almost none at all to re-acclimatize to its presence.  It sounded much the same as it always had, if a bit more world-weary.

Newt sighed softly in his sleep and reached up to scratch vaguely at some itch, arm settling across his stomach.  Without really thinking about it, Hermann found himself reaching out to lay his hand over Newt's, tracing the familiar lines of ink along his wrist with his fingertips.  He found himself nearly dozing off again, lulled by the sound and the warmth of him, when Newt began to wake up. 

Hermann kept gently rubbing his wrist.  Newt’s fingers twitched and he turned his hand over, catching Hermann’s hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.  

“Good morning.”

Newt rubbed his eyes with his free hand. "Morning.  How long have you been awake?"   
  
"I'm not sure.  Maybe an hour."   
  
"You didn't have to wait for me to wake up.”   
  
It didn't happen as frequently now, thankfully, but in the beginning, Newt had been prone to waking up scared and disoriented.  He would often wake unsure of where or even  _ when _ he was.  At best, he’d be confused and at worst he’d cry and panic until he became aware enough of his surroundings to realize he was safe.  It had still been an issue when Newt had started sleeping in Hermann's room again and it wasn’t uncommon for Hermann to console him until the feeling passed.  He knew Newt still felt self-conscious about it. He didn’t want to be a burden, no matter how many times Hermann told him he wasn’t one.   
  
"I stayed because I wanted to.  I’m in no particular rush to get up.”

Newt snorted.  “Since when have you been such a loafer?”

“Since you re-entered my life, approximately.”

“So I’m a bad influence on you,” he sighed theatrically.  “I should probably leave, right now.”

He made as if to sit up, but didn’t get very far before Hermann pulled him back down.  “Don’t you dare.”

Newt scooped Hermann in his arms and rolled him over onto his back, mindful of his leg.  His smile widened into a grin. Perhaps not quite as bright as it once was, but still the smile Hermann had fallen in love with, long before he’d had the sense to realize it.   

“Or what?”

Hermann grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt and dragged him down into a kiss.  Newt let out a startled “mmph” before melting into it, taking one of Hermann’s hands and holding it close.  He could feel the flutter of Newt’s pulse against his knuckles and, after a moment’s consideration, turned his hand to press his palm against his chest.  Newt grinned against his mouth, heart beating just a little faster.

“When do you have to be into work?” Newt breathed.

Hermann craned around to look at the clock on his nightstand and sighed.  “An hour. When’s your appointment?”

“Noon-ish.”

“We could meet for lunch afterward.”

“Yeah, I’d like that.”  Newt looked thoughtful. “Around... two?”

“I should be available.”

The past few months, Hermann had had more work than he honestly knew what to do with.  After years of fairly routine, low-pressure work on the Jaegers, he wasn’t used to this sort of frantic pace anymore.  Even with the Breach sealed and the latest kaiju attack dealt with, the PPDC still wanted his help in forming a plan in the likely event that the Precursors attempted to attack again.  What they really wanted was a way to stage a preemptive strike, though he’d yet to find a feasible one. The Precursors had relinquished very little in the way of useful information before they’d been forcibly removed from Newton’s mind.

“‘Available.’  Everyone wants a piece of you.”  Hermann gave him a look and Newt laughed, “No, it’s true and it’s awesome.  You’re awesome.” He leaned in to kiss him again, nuzzling his face, and Hermann wanted nothing more than to stay in that bed with him for the rest of the day.

~

The place Newton asked to meet for lunch was picturesque, by Shatterdome standards.  It wasn’t a typical lunch location, but it didn’t strike Hermann as particularly odd, either -- Newt wasn’t very comfortable eating in the mess hall, these days.  It was a small alcove nestled against a wall, largely out of sight from the rest the outside area, and all the ambient commotion was just a little softer, more distant there.  That's where he found Newt, sitting on a blanket with an improvised picnic basket at his side, looking out at the ocean with a thoughtful look on his face. He didn't immediately notice that he'd arrived, and Hermann took a few moments to stand a few feet away, watching him.

He looked… content.  It may have been the first time in a long time that Hermann had seen him so at ease.  It made his heart swell with such love and fondness that he must have made some sort of involuntary noise, because Newt jerked his head in his direction, eyes brightening when they landed on him.  

“Hey, you’re here!”  He squinted at him. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Only a moment.  Have you been waiting long?”

“About twenty minutes?”

“I’m sorry I’m late.  I ran into some difficulties with the latest code,” Hermann explained as he carefully eased himself on the ground.  Newt offered him his arm, automatically, and Hermann took it. “I would’ve called--”

“Don’t worry about it,” Newt replied.  “Figured it was probably something like that.  Did you get it figured out?”

“For the most part.  I’ll have to run a couple more simulations tomorrow-- it’ll be a bit later than they’d like, but it’ll be taken care of.”

“Tomorrow?”  Newt laughed.  “I remember when you used to practically move into the lab for days to meet a deadline.”

“I don’t have quite as much stamina for that sort of thing as I used to,” Hermann said.  “And besides, with no immediate crisis at hand at the moment, I think it’s important to… take the time to appreciate what I have, when I have it.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Newt sprawled out, propping himself up on his elbows.  He closed his eyes and basked in the sun for a few seconds before rolling over to flip the lid off the picnic basket -- which, upon closer examination, looked like a repurposed cardboard box he’d absconded with from a supply closet somewhere and attached a makeshift handle to. 

“I got us a couple sandwiches, some fruit, some wine if you feel like it, a couple bottles of water if you don’t.  Grabbed some crackers. There’s a lot of other stuff in there, too, I just grabbed whatever looked good. Pretty sure the mess staff thought I had some sinister plan to reopen the Breach with cheese and pickles.”  At the look on Hermann’s face, Newt waved a hand. “I don’t care. I’m getting used to it. Besides, it’s not like I was ever Mr. Popularity in the PPDC to begin with, right?” He gave Hermann a crooked smile. “Seriously, it’s fine.  Fuck ‘em.”

“If you weren’t,” Hermann replied, “you could talk to me about it.”

“I-- I know and I  _ would _ , but-- they’re not worth ruining lunch over.  I’m not going to let everybody’s ‘oh no, it’s  _ him _ ,’ reactions take over my life, Hermann.”

“I agree.  Fuck them.”

Newt gave him a startled look, Hermann’s lips twitched, and then they were both laughing.   
  
“Now, I have a very important question: did you bring any napkins?"   
  
"Hermann, please-- of  _ course, _ I did.  Check under the sandwiches."   
  
Hermann rooted through the basket and was about to ask if Newton was  _ sure _ there were napkins when he found, under a particularly rumpled and misshapen sandwich, a ring box.   
  
"Find them yet?" Newt teased.   
  
Hermann straightened and cradled the box in his hands for a moment before opening it. He'd half-expected to find his old engagement ring, which he kept in a drawer in his room.    
  
It wasn't.   
  
It was an entirely different, new engagement ring.  

Newt sat up and looked intently at Hermann’s face then down at the ring in his hands.

"So… I figured maybe we could give it another try. I didn't want to ruin your proposal-- well, I guess I kind of already did, but I didn't want to ruin it  _ again _ \-- or, like, make you feel like the first time wasn’t real because it  _ was _ .  It’s-- I think it’s probably the last time I felt like my life was  _ my life _ up until seven months ago and-- anyway, I figured we could just keep both pairs of rings because we have all these fingers for a reason, right?  I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Hermann. I want to get old with you -- like,  _ really _ old. I want to buy a house with you somewhere, settle down, all of it. I'm-- we can even have kids if you want-- we never really got to talk about stuff like that, did we? But I want to talk about it. I want everything. I want to see you every day, I want to fall asleep next to you every night.  I love you, Hermann. Will you marry me? And," he added hastily, "I swear if you say yes,  _ nothing _ is going to stop this wedding. If you give me another chance at this, I swear I'm going to be the best husband.  I'll make you so happy. For every year I missed, I'll give you _ ten _ .”

“Newton, that's a hundred years.”

“Yeah, well, I'm feeling ambitious and if anyone could pull it off, it's probably us.  We've established that pretty much no one and nothing can stand in our way. What’s a century when you literally banished monsters from my head with the power of love, dude?”

Hermann’s lips twitched.  “I actually used incredibly painstakingly tested science--"

“Okay, fine, love  _ and _ science.  ...Will you?”   
  
“Yes,” he said with a smile. "I'll marry you.”   
  
“Yeah?”

“If they hadn’t taken you from me, we would have been married.  We  _ still _ would be.  I never stopped wanting that future.”

“Me neither.  I always sort of hoped-- I don’t know.  That I’d find a way to get them out of my head.  The first couple of years all I could think about is how the first thing I’d do is come back to you.  And then-- well, you know. That didn’t happen.”

Hermann took his hands in his.  “You don’t have to ‘make up’ anything to me, Newt.  We can’t get back the years they stole from us, but we can move forward, together.”

Newt grinned and, despite the tears in his eyes, it was a genuine one.  “Is this my marriage proposal or yours? Because that was pretty good.”

He plucked the ring out of the box and slid it onto Hermann’s finger.  

“Now,” Hermann said, “the food in this basket  _ is _ edible?  It’s not just a series of props to hide the ring?”

“Oh, no, it’s definitely edible.  I mean, as edible as the food here ever is.”  Hermann pulled out the misshapen sandwich that the ring had been hidden underneath and Newt shrugged helplessly.  “I was worried it would slide around in there.”

“Of course.”  Hermann pulled out the wine.  “Glasses?”

“For  _ some  _ reason, the mess hall doesn’t have any those.  Something about corrupting the youth. We’ll just have to drink it from the bottle like a couple of ne’er-do-wells.”

“Did you bring a corkscrew?”

Newt stared down at the box thoughtfully.  Several moments of silence passed. “You know, what?  Wine is overrated.”

Hermann smirked at him.  “No glasses. No corkscrew.  One has to wonder how you managed to find the wine.”

“Look,” Newt protested, “I was nervous, okay?  And practicing my speech, in my head. I wasn’t thinking about corkscrews.”  Hermann’s shoulders were shaking with laughter and Newt said, “Okay, come here.”  He scooted closer and, when Hermann leaned in, hooked an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into an embrace.  

The sandwiches, it turned out, were passable at best.  They never did get the wine bottle open. The crackers were too salty, the cheese was stale, and the pickles were a year past their expiration date.  It was still, Hermann thought as he basked in the warmth of both the sun and Newt, the best lunch he’d had in a good ten years.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from [this poem](https://allpoetry.com/i-carry-your-heart-with-me) because that's just the level of romantic idiot I'd reached by the time I was done writing this (it's not that much higher than my usual level of romantic idiot, to be honest).
> 
> I didn't originally plan for this is be a proposal fic, it just sort of happened.
> 
> (Newt definitely has, like, one of those ankle trackers on because there's no way the PPDC wouldn't still be keeping tabs on that after less than a year.)


End file.
